Construction of the Wusong Fort had begun before the outbreak of direct conflict between the Chinese Empire and the Anglo-French forces, and Lin Zhe had already begun to deal with the threat from the Anglo-French forces as early as last year, when he became aware of the British and French's desire to obtain more treaty ports and attempts to legalize the opium trade and control tariffs.

However, last year, the strategic focus of the Chinese Empire has always been on the capture of Jiangbei, so the defense support for southern Jiangsu, especially Shanghai and other coastal areas, is not large, and the specific measure is to train the Sixth Division and garrison Shanghai.

At the same time, the navy began to build the Wusong Fort, and for this purpose the navy also specially organized and trained a coastal defense fortress unit, that is, the Wusong fortress unit, whose strength composition is mainly a coastal defense heavy artillery unit, and there are also a small number of marine units.

The Wusong Fort was built earlier, and the main project was initially completed as early as the beginning of the year, but it has been due to the small number of heavy artillery of the Chinese army, which has not been able to obtain enough artillery support.

However, this situation was resolved in the first few months of this year, and in order to allow the Wusong battery to be equipped with enough naval guns as soon as possible, the scarce rear-loading rifled guns in the Linde Machine Factory began to be rationed to the battery on a priority basis.

Up to now, there are a total of nine 180 mm breech-loading rifled guns, that is, the shore defense gun version of the Linde 1857 1857 naval gun, and fourteen 120 mm breech-loading rifled guns, that is, the shore defense gun version of the Linde 1857 120 mm naval gun.

In addition to the above-mentioned 23 rear-loading rifled guns, which represent the most advanced contemporary breech guns, there are also nearly 30 large-caliber front-loading smoothbore guns, each with six 64-pounder coastal defense guns. Twelve 32-pounder coastal defense guns, ten 24-pounder coastal defense guns.

The above-mentioned guns are all coastal defense guns that have been manufactured by the Linde Machine Factory over the past few years. Among them, the 64-pounder coastal defense guns were built in advance for the Wusong Fort, and were not equipped on the battleships.

It's not that the Navy's warships don't want. However, the warships of the navy are generally relatively small, and the real main force is only more than 80 tons of river gunboat Xingwu class, and the main gun on it is only a 12-pounder naval gun. Several gunboats of several hundred tons were also equipped with mainly 24-pounder guns, and a small number of 32-pounder guns.

By the time the navy had 1,000-ton cruisers, rear-loading rifled guns had already been developed, so instead of using 64-pound or 32-pound front-loading smoothbore guns, 180 mm (110 pounds) and 120 mm (40 pounds) breech-loading rifled guns were directly used in one step.

As a result, more than a dozen 64-pounder guns manufactured by the Linde Machinery Factory were never equipped on battleships, but were used in Wusong Fort, Jiangyin Fortress and the Gold Medal Fort in Fuzhou.

By the beginning of June, the British and French forces had arrived in Shanghai. The main works on the Wusong Fort have been completed, including the battery's gun emplacement, ammunition depot, land-facing defense system, three small batteries for deploying small and medium-caliber artillery, as well as a hidden soldier cave, two trenches extending outward, wooden piles outside the trenches, and a canal that draws river water.

Twenty-eight front-loading smoothbore cannons of twenty-four, thirty-two, and sixty-four pounds. Twenty-three breech-loading rifled guns of 120 mm and 180 mm, in addition to nine 64-pounder mortars and six 120-pounder mortars.

In addition to the 66 heavy guns mentioned above, there were nearly 20 12-pounder front-loading smoothbore guns and several 32-pounder mortars facing land.

Of course. In actual combat, if a large number of infantry units are stationed, the army's field artillery will also be brought, such as after the Seventh Army is stationed at Wusong Fort. The Seventh Army's own two artillery regiments had a total of nearly seventy twelve-pounder field guns and twenty-four or thirty-two pounder mortars.

Assuming that the entire army of the Seventh Army moved into the Wusong Fortress, the number of artillery pieces in the entire fortress would be more than 130 guns. Even if the Anglo-French army was strong, it had to directly shell the fortress with the fleet. If it directly launches a landing operation, its hope of success is very slim.

And this is also an important reason why West Malaysia refused to risk the enemy's artillery to land directly, although the British and French forces were strong, there was no need to waste the lives of soldiers on this battery in front of them.

And when Ximahui discussed with Erjin, Ge Luo and others about how to land there and how to cooperate in the future, Xu Yanqing and Bing Qusong and others on the Wusong Fort had already gotten off the observation point of the fort, and these senior generals did not stay too much, but quickly rushed back to their respective units one by one, for example, Xu Yanqing left the Wusong Fort directly with his subordinates, and now his troops are still nearly ten kilometers away from the northwest of the Wusong Fort.

And the other high-ranking generals also had a lot of things, so they all returned separately.

Anyway, many of their battle plans have been formulated in advance, and they can't change there if they make temporary adjustments, and all they have to do now is wait for the attack of the British and French forces.

On the day when the Anglo-French forces arrived at the mouth of the Yangtze River, everything was still very calm, and the main fleet of the Anglo-French forces had been stopped 10 kilometers downstream of the Wusong Fort, except for some small speedboats and other boats to measure the depth of the water.

However, this changed at dawn the next day.

Bing Qusong, who had already set up his headquarters in the Wusong Fort, was woken up by the guards early in the morning!

"Commander, those foreigners are starting to move!" Although Bing Qusong, who had just been woken up, was still a little confused, as soon as he heard that the foreigner moved, he immediately put on the coat that the guards had prepared for him, took the hot towel handed by the guards while walking, and hurriedly wiped his face before walking out.

Not only Bing Qusong, but also several other senior generals in the fortress were also woken up by Qi Qi, and it didn't take long for Bing Qusong and Rear Admiral Su Xuanbin, commander of the naval fortress force, Lin Mao, commander of the Sixth Division, and others to once again ascend the observation platform, pick up the navy's special high-magnification monoculars and look at the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Through the binoculars, you can see many warships breaking through the waves, and the figures of battleships loom in the early morning mist, led by a huge sail battleship. There are also several small steam tugboats emitting black smoke next to the ship, which are working together to tow the 3,000-ton sail warship up the river.

Behind this massive sail battleship. It is a series of fast sail warships with an equally large displacement, ranging from more than 1,000 tons to more than 2,000 tons. From this a complete column was formed.

To the left and right of these sail warships and in front of them, there were many steam cruisers of about 1,000 tons and even gunboats of hundreds of tons, and their speed was a little faster, generally able to reach more than eight knots.

Just by looking at it, you can count that there are more than fifty of these warships in front of you!

The strength of this fleet could crush almost any water power in the Far East, and the navy of the Chinese Empire, which had been built for several years, was not even a fraction of that of others, and such a huge fleet that was enough to crush any surface power in the Far East was only an insignificant sub-fleet for British maritime power.

Even most of the ships in it were not ships of the British Royal Navy, but the fleet of the British East India Company. Well, including most of the soldiers who fought.

Here, it is worth mentioning that although it is said that this is an Anglo-French alliance, it is not simply a war between the two countries, because there is a very special existence here, that is, the British East India Company.

The British East India Company is most famous for its opium trade. At one point, the company's opium business accounted for one-seventh of the East India Company's revenue, a share for a large commercial organization operating a colony. It means more than just money.

Naturally, this British East India Company cannot be finished in a day or two, so I will not talk about the rest, but only the role of the British East India Company in this war.

Although the company has been in decline, last year it officially handed over the administrative management of India to the United Kingdom. But the power of the East India Company remained the backbone of Britain in Asia.

In this war, 30 percent of the warships and 50 percent of the transports of the huge fleet dispatched by the British army were East India Company. In particular, the small and medium-sized steam gunboats were almost all prefixed with the prefix 'HEICS', that is, the British East India Company fleet.

And what's interesting. Not only the naval vessels, but even the army units were mostly the armed forces of the East India Company. Among the 15,000 troops stationed in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai, the real British Army was only a few thousand, and quite a few troops were drawn from infantry battalions, such as the 1st Battalion of the East Lancashire Corps and the 1st Battalion of the Royal Queen's Corps.

The real main force was the private army of the East India Company, the Anglo-Indian Army, including the 8th Punjab Regiment and the 15th Punjab Regiment.

At present, the East India Company has a total of about 240,000 armed forces in India and other places, and if it were not for the uprising that broke out on the Indian side last year, which involved a large number of the company's armed forces, I am afraid that this would not have sent 10,000 people, but 20,000 or even 30,000 people.

To some extent, the war was provoked and mainly participated in by the British East India Company, with the British government and the French only playing a secondary role in cooperating.

It's just that now the British East India Company is in decline, and the British government took back the administrative power of India last year, and the nationalization of the East India Company is not far off, so from this point of view, it is indeed a war between the British government and the French government and the Chinese Empire.

The only thing that is certain is that whether it is the British Army or the Indian Army of the East India Company, they can be regarded as British troops, and they are all enemies of the Chinese Empire.

And now, these enemy fleets have gone up the river, and as time passes bit by bit, even if they go up the river slowly, they will still enter the range of the Wusong battery after more than an hour.

When the fleet of the British and French forces entered the artillery of the Wusong Battery, the naval coastal defense artillery of the Chinese Empire on the battery did not hesitate and directly shelled the enemy ships that broke into the firing range.

"Fire!" Following the orders of the officers, the artillerymen fired the first round of artillery fire of the battle.

In an instant, the rumbling cannon sounded on the vast Yangtze River! (To be continued......)